When it comes to most situations in life, I am a firm believer in controlling the course of your destiny. Perhaps, there are some people who have incredible things simply “happen” to them, but I have never been one of them, and so I have learned to seize life by the balls and make cool stuff happen on my own. This has been known to work to my advantage – except when I recently tried to apply said approach to my personal life.
Creative guys are trending.
Blame it on the rise of digital technology or inspiration Apple campaigns (seems like a bit of a chicken or the egg scenario), but it appears that every other man in the Western Hemisphere has recently decided to iManeuver his way into the artistic fields, previously reserved but for the select (professionally trained) few. As a result, we now have an entire segment of demi-professional DJs, “multimedia artists”, “photographers” and “content creators” who have birthed their own, very specific culture that may seem almost foreign to us mere mortals. Having logged enough hours on one particular Creative dating Mecca (GUESS WHICH ONE!) to give Malcom Gladwell’s 1000-hours-to-become-an-expert theory a whirl for its validity, I have decided to create a thorough guide that will help you navigate this male category with the aptness (and Acne gear) that it deserves.
At the risk of subjecting myself to a smidgen of judgement (or a mandatory psych screening), I am fairly certain that there are at least two people residing inside of me. One is a boring snoozeball who experiences sexual awakenings at the sight of Tribeca lofts and has long selected the prep schools for her unborn children. The second one is a wannabe vagabond-slash-activist who dreams of living out of a backpack in Sihanoukville for $6 a day forever. Archenemies to the core, they appear incapable of agreeing on anything in my life, regularly giving me mixed directions and partaking in verbal disputes that would put the upcoming Presidential debates to shame. Since the yearlong punishment known as 29 Going On 30 commenced nine months ago, the two have been having a particularly hard time getting along and agreeing what this milestone means in the course my life. And so I have decided to give my unaligned yin and yang the breathing space they need to air out the emotions on this public platform.
As anybody who has ever dipped into the perplexing landscape of modern romance knows, keeping up with the associated vernacular is about as challenging as keeping up with the latest denim trend, and a lot less enjoyable. First came “ghosting,” the vanishing act that made it normal—if not exactly acceptable—for the object of one’s once-reciprocated interest to disappear into the abyss without as much as a mere warning. Now comes its commitment-phobe cousin, courtesy of New York Magazine writer Jason Chen: “benching,” a sports-inspired furthering of the concept of leading someone on. It entails keeping someone hanging for extended periods of time, occasionally throwing them a bone in the form of a casual text, while never allowing for the relationship to transition into anything remotely substantial (i.e., keeping a player on the bench as a backup while you pursue others whom you might prefer to, shall we say, “put in play” first).
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Editor’s Note: This modern-day horror tale is brought to you by Julia Reiss, a Los Angeles-bred writer and humorist with Parisian tendencies, based in New York City. When she’s not writing or overcome with ennui, you can find her flexing her credit limit at any of the city’s retail establishments. For updates in short form, follow her on Twitter and Instagram. And for all other things Julia, stay up to date at www.iamjuliareiss.com.
The way I see it, online dating has a deceivingly bad rap. Sure, I had my initial trepidations. But that’s only because, as a child of the 80s, I was taught that the only people you could meet online were the those who weren’t allowed to be within 100 feet of a playground.
Things change.
For those who don’t follow me on Instagram or Snapchat (Which you should! Now!), I am currently wrapping a two-week tour of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam with my 18-year-old niece, because that’s what adults with absentee personal lives do in an effort to “grow” as humans. Although the majority our growth has entailed seeing how much pad thai / coconuts / spring rolls we can consume within the course of a day, we have been fortunate enough to meet some very cool locals who have gone above and beyond to educate us on their customs (and ensure that we stay away from malaria.) Sensing that the Buddhist-rooted culture may have something to teach us in the romantic department, I chose to utilize a 10-hour bus ride to interrogate our fantastic Vietnamese tour guide, Sony, on the intricacies of the Southeast Asia dating landscape.
